Economy

According to former German finance minister Peer Steinbrück, AIG's rescue had a lot to do with European pressure. Steinbrück: The investment bank Lehman Brothers collapsed on Sept. 15, 2008, and the world's largest insurance company,…

by Michael Pettis After three weeks of traveling it is good to be back in Beijing, even though now I have to work through the mountain of very fattening mooncakes my very kind students have given me for Mid-Autumn Festival Day.  While…

by Annaly Capital Management Last Friday was a Z.1 Flow of Funds day, always a fun day. The 137 page report from the Federal Reserve features data for the second quarter of 2010. Total credit market debt outstanding grew slightly during…

Via Bloomberg: White House officials expect Lawrence Summers to leave his job as the president’s National Economic Council director after November’s congressional elections, according to three people familiar with the matter. His…

The main street reaction to the NBER's determination of a recovery starting in June 2009 has been – as expected – angry. Here are a few sample comments to my post on the recession's end: Obviously we need to redefine…

by the Consumer Metrics Institute We founded the Consumer Metrics Institute precisely because we felt that the economic bureaucrats in Washington were out of touch with the economy that most of us live in. They remind us of those patients…

Frederick Sheehan is the author of Panderer to Power: The Untold Story of How Alan Greenspan Enriched Wall Street and Left a Legacy of Recession  (McGraw-Hill, 2009). It is unfortunate the media does not make better use of an…

The NBER Business Cycle Dating Committee has determined that the recession which began in December 2007 ended in June 2009. In the report announcing this decision, the NBER wrote that economic activity is typically lower post-recession than…

by Gary Shilling Investor attitudes have reversed abruptly in recent months. As late as last March, most translated the year-long robust rise in stocks, foreign currencies, commodities and the weakness in Treasury bonds that had commenced…

The economic historian Arnold Toynbee argued that civilization began in the East, expanded around the world, and will return to the East. Even if expressed somewhat differently, many people seem to believe that the 21st century will be a…